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04 - The Moderns - The Ego and His Own - Max Stirner · Logic Library

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  Section B. The moderns. If any man be in Christ, he is
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  a new creature. The old is passed away. Behold, all is become
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  new. As it was said above to the ancients the world was a truth,
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  we must say here to the moderns the spirit was a truth. But
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  here as there we must not omit the supplement a truth whose untruth they tried
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  to get back of, and at last they really do. A course similar
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  to that which Antiquity took. May be demonstrated in Christianity also in that the
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  understanding was held a prisoner under the dominion of the Christian dogmas up to the
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  time preparatory to the Reformation, but in the pre Reformation century asserted itself sophistically
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  and played heretical pranks with all tenets of them faith and the talk then was
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  especially in Italy and at the Roman court. If only the heart remains Christian
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  minded, the understanding may go right on taking its pleasure. Long before the
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  Reformation, people were so thoroughly accustomed to find spun wranglings that the Pope and
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  most others looked on Luther's appearance too, as a mere wrangling of monks.
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  At first, Humanism corresponds to Sophisticism, and as in the time of the
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  sophist Greek life stood in its fullest bloome the Periclean age. So the most
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  brilliant things happened in the time of Humanism, or as one might perhaps also
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  say of Machiavelianism, printing the New World, etc. All this time the
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  heart was still far from wanting to relieve itself of its Christian contest. But
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  finally the Reformation, like Socrates, took hold seriously of the heart itself,
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  and since then hearts have kept growing visibly more Unchristian. As with Luther,
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  people began to take the matter to heart. The outcome of this step of
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  the Reformation must be that the heart also gets lightened of the heavy burden of
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  Christian faith. The heart, from day to day more unchristian, loses the
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  contents with which it had busied itself, till at last nothing but empty,
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  warm heartedness is left it, the quite general love of men, the love
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  of man, the love of freedom, self consciousness. Only so is Christianity
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  complete, because it has become bald, withered, and void of contents.
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  There are now no contents whatsoever against which the heart does not mutiny unless indeed
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  the heart, unconsciously or without self consciousness, lets them slip in the heart
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  criticizes to death with hard hearted mercilessness everything that wants to make its way in
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  and is capable, except as before, unconsciously or taken by surprise of no
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  friendship, no love. What could there be in mental love? Since they
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  are all alike egoists, none of them man as such, none are spirit.
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  Only the Christian loves only the spirit. But where could one be found
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  who should really be nothing but spirit to have a liking for the corporeal man
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  with hide and hair? Why no longer be a spiritual warm heartedness? It
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  would be treason against pure warm heartedness. The theoretical regard for pure warm heartedness
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  is by no means to be conceived as that kindliness that gives everybody a friendly
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  handshake. On the contrary, pure warm heartedness is warm hearted toward nobody.
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  It is only a theoretical interest concern for man as man, not as a
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  person. The person is repulsive to it because of being egoistic, because of
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  not being that abstraction man. But it is only for the abstraction that one
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  can have a theoretical regard to pure warm heartedness or pure theory. Men exist
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  only to be criticized, scoffed at, and thoroughly despised to it, no
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  less than to the fanatical parson. They are only filth and other such nice
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  things. Push to this extremity of disinterested warm heartedness, we must finally become
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  conscious that the Spirit, which alone the Christian loves, is nothing. In
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  other words, that the Spirit is a lie. What has here been set
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  down roughly summarily and doubtless as yet incomprehensibly will it is to be hoped become
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  clear as we go on. Let us take up the inheritance left by the
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  ancients, and as active workmen, do with it as much as can be
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  done with it. The world lies despised at our feet, far beneath us
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  and our heaven, into which its mighty arms are no longer thrust, and
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  its stupefying breath does not come seductively as it may pose. It can delude
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  nothing but our senses. It cannot lead astray the spirit and Spirit alone.
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  After all, we really are having once got back of things, the Spirit
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  has also got above them and become free from their bonds. Emancipated supernal free.
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  So speaks spiritual freedom to the spirit, which, after long toil,
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  has got rid of the world, the worldless spirit. Nothing is left after
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  the loss of the world and the worldly, but the spirit and the spiritual.
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  Yet, as it has only moved away from the world and made of
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  itself a being free from the world, without really being able to annihilate the
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  world, this remains to it a stumbling block that cannot be cleared away,
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  a discredited existence. And as on the other hand it knows and recognizes nothing
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  but the spirit and the spiritual, it must perpetually carry about with it the
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  longing to spiritualize the world, to redeem it from the blacklist. Therefore,
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  like a youth, it goes about with plans for the redemption or improvement of
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  the world. The ancients we saw serve the worldly, the natural, the
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  natural order of the world. But they incessantly ask themselves of this service.
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  And when they had tired themselves to death in ever renewed attempts at revolt,
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  then among their last side was born to them the God, the conqueror of
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  the world. All their doing had been nothing but wisdom of the world,
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  an effort to get back of the world and above it, And what is
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  the wisdom of the many following centuries? What did the moderns try to get
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  back of? No longer to get back of the world, for the ancients
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  had accomplished that, But back of the God whom the ancients bequeathed to them,
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  Back of the God who is spirit, back of everything that is,
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  the spirits, the spiritual. But the activity of the Spirit, which searches
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  even the depths of the Godhead, is theology. If the ancients have nothing
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  to show but wisdom of the world, the moderns never did, nor do,
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  make their way further than to theology. We shall later see that even
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  the newest revolts against God are nothing but the extremest efforts of theology, that
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  is, theological insurrections. End of section.